This article talks about the Equal Pay Act that was supposed to end gender discrimination in the workplace. This has obviously not ended gender biases; women continue to earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn on the job. This article talks about the lawsuits filed against Novartis pharmaceutical company. This company had been listed as one of the top 100 companies to work by Working Mother magazine. Novartis had discriminated against its female employees in pay and promotions for at least five years, from 2002-2007. This company was very discriminatory against women due to their motherhood duties. The examples mentioned in this article sadden me that things like this happen in the workplace in the United States.
As mentioned in Chapter 13 in our textbook Leadership, there are a number of reasons on why to remove barriers of ethnics, racial minorities, and women discrimination in the workplace. First, this allows an opportunity for everyone to have equal opportunity in taking on any leadership role. Second, this increases the pool of potential candidates and makes it possible to find the most qualified person for the job. Third, this makes businesses and government more representative. Next, more diversity increases productivity. Last, research has shown that women in leadership roles have increased financial performance (NorthHouse 306). These are some of the many reasons why to focus on decreasing and ultimately eliminating biases in the workplace. Are there any reasons to eliminate biases in the workplace that you can think of, Thoughts?
Back in 1940, Eleanor Roosevelt said, “In government, in business, and in professions there may be a day when women will be looked upon as persons. We are, however, far from that day as yet.” We have certainly made steps in the right direction to recognize women as a knowledgeable, educated individual. These steps are shown through the Equal Pay Act, more and more women having careers beyond being a stay at home mother, nearly 60% of women earn bachelors and masters degrees, etc. Even though we as a nation have made progress there is still much discrimination based on pay and point blank racism in many organizations in business. The factors that support discrimination are women receive less education, become mothers, less work experience, and have fewer development opportunities (NorthHouse 304). Regardless if you receive this information as true or false, it is just unfair to all the smart females in this country that are not taken serious by employers. As women face a “glass ceiling”, men appear to have a “glass escalator” in their way to the top. It is an extreme challenge for women to overcome all of these obscene barriers.
Stereotypes affect the way employers look at women. Women are viewed as having the characteristics of concern for others, sensitivity, warmth, helpfulness, and nurturing. As men are viewed with the characteristics of confidence, assertiveness, independence, rationality, and decisiveness. Many of the characteristics that are looked for when promoting someone are those that men typically have. Employers should never stereotype by sex or any other way because each person has their own characteristics, but if fair or not this is what happens in many organizations. Women can try to overcome this stereotype by adapting a transformational style of leadership. This leadership style helps females maintain their femininity while adapting attributes of power, assertiveness, confidence etc (NorthHouse 311). Is there another style of leadership that women can use to increase their chances of becoming noticed by employers? Or other traits or behaviors they can adopt?
A question that arises in this article is discrimination is illegal so why does it persist? The reasons that are mentioned are it is more cost effective and lack of knowledge of the salary difference between genders. I believe that discrimination still persists due to there will always be people in an organization that are discriminatory against a certain race, gender, ethnicity, etc. Discrimination will never completely go away due to certain individuals that break the rule of ethics. I believe discrimination is a question of ethics. Morally this issue is wrong and should not be a practice in organizations such as Novartis. Does anyone else have an opinion about why discrimination is such a problem in companies such as; Wal-Mart and Novartis pharmaceutical?
-Mitchell Terry
I think that ethics and stereotypes are the main reason that women are discriminated against in the workforce. As sad as it is, men do see women as a weaker being, probably due to their traits. This is surprising however, because most men would say that their mothers are their role models or the reason they are the way they are today. You would think that mentality would make men put women on a higher pedestal. With that in mind I do agree that the trait theory and transformational style of leadership would change the view of women. If they could show the men they work with that they possess the same traits and style of leadership that they have they can compete on a more even level.
ReplyDelete-Danielle Sparacino
To go along with this blog as well as the comment above, I can agree that for certain positions with in today's organizations men are held at higher standards then women. One thing that I do not hold to be true is the continued suggestion that is is based purely on the sex of the individual. I feel that it is more so connected to the "gender" or the masculine/feminine traits of each individual.
ReplyDeleteAs the original blogger stated in his fourth paragraph, "This leadership style helps females maintain their femininity while adapting attributes of power, assertiveness, confidence etc (NorthHouse 311)."
This quote pulled from the paragraph, which was originally from Northhouse depicts what I am trying to get across. I am say that in current society business around the United States are basing their decisions off of the attributes. Then the point that I was driving against was connecting female and male to certain traits instead of feminine and masculine.
If a female provides adequate skills of the attributes stated above many employers will see that and not hold the sex of the individual against them.
Another point to look at was the statements about it always being men who discriminate against the women. In my short years within the working world I have seen men turn down women and women turn down women due to their feminine characteristics. The prejudice that only men discriminate against females or the feminine characteristics is biased in my opinion.
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Will Traynor
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ReplyDeleteI also agree that transformational leadership is a style of leadership that will help women move up in the workplace. I also agree with Will, however, about women being just as biased against other women as men are biased against women. I find that women tend to be threatened by other women so they treat them differently. By threatened I mean that women with more experience seem to think that women with less experience will take their place.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed that while traits like assertiveness are expected and desired in men it is not the case for women. Often when women display traits such as confidence and assertiveness they are seen as too aggressive and thus are discriminated against. There is a double standard going on in businesses.
Anna Swacker
I think the reason that this kind of discrimination exists is because the people who are doing the discriminating have been getting away with it for years. The common explaination I have heard many times about the differences in wages is that men are more likely to negotiate and fight for a higher wage while women tend to just accept whatever is offered to them. From the point of the view of the person doing the hiring, the fault would lie with women and not with them. Unfortunately, given that this still is going on, it seems that this kind of manipulation continues to go unpunished. Like in the article posted by Anna where the government of Norway stepped in to make things more equal. Perhaps it is time for our government to step in and start to regulate fair wages. And to agree with Anna again, traits that are often desirable in men are usually undesirable in women. After all, any woman in the workplace who acts too assertive or confident is generally classified as the big B and passed up for promotions anyway because people don't want to work with her. Clearly something needs to change.
ReplyDelete-Geoffrey Ali